Film studio attracts more lights, camera, action

Date: February 25 2013

Karl Quinn

AFTER eight years, two name changes and a government buyback, the Docklands film and television studio may finally have turned a corner.

Last week it emerged that Hollywood star Ethan Hawke is to shoot the mid-budget film Predestination in Melbourne. Like the low-budget local movie Healing, it will be based at Docklands Studios Melbourne.

In fact, Predestination will be the first production to make use of the studio's new workshop and office facilities following a $10 million upgrade commissioned by the Brumby government in 2010 and opened by Business Minister Louise Asher two weeks ago.

While acceptance from both sides of politics is finally a reality, some critics will continue to think of the studio as a massive white (or, rather, grey) elephant until it lands a major Hollywood production such as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which is currently shopping around for an Australian base.

Sadly, landing such a big fish may not be a realistic goal.

According to one insider, Docklands is ''plan C'' for Disney, the company behind David Fincher's big-budget movie.

Ahead of it are Village Roadshow's Gold Coast studio (which has water tanks) and Sydney's Fox (with larger sound stages).

Making things hard for Docklands is the fact that two of its five sound stages are unavailable due to long-term television bookings, for Seven's Winners and Losers and for Nine, which has a five-year tenancy.

''It's pretty clear that what we need down there is another big sound stage, something the size of the Fox studios,'' says filmmaker (and past Docklands critic) David Parker, whose Cascade Films was party to a losing bid to develop and run the studio complex in 2002.

That, in fact, is precisely what a government masterplan recommended in 2011. Though not costed or budgeted for, it would likely cost $20 million.

That puts Docklands in a bind. It is unlikely to win big productions without a new shed, but it is hard to justify it while the strong Australian dollar keeps most Hollywood films at bay.

So, for now, it is likely that Docklands will continue to host a mix of Australian and mid-budget international film productions and TV.

It's a long way from the $218 million a year of new production Central City Studios promised when it won the contract in 2002. It's even short of the $100 million a year to which it was contractually bound (to put that in context, the total value of film and television production in Victoria in 2011-12 was $209 million).

But it is, perhaps, more in keeping with Melbourne's true place in the filmmaking firmament.

''It's unrealistic to expect you can have the whole place booked out all year, but we're looking to have a number of the stages booked most of the time,'' says studio boss Rod Allan.

Docklands has hosted big productions - the forthcoming I, Frankenstein, 2011's Killer Elite, Spike Jonze's Where The Wild Things Are and Steven Spielberg's epic TV series The Pacific - with expenditure here of more than $330 million. But while it ''covers its operating costs'', the studio is not, and never will be, a ''cash cow''.

''I think people have an expectation that a film studio is a licence to print money, and that's not the case,'' Allan says. ''It's a factory. It's about providing film and TV makers with the means of making a show.

''Factories themselves don't make money - it's the products that come out of them that do.''